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This Week’s Summary

• The cryptocurrency market looks to end the week at a total market capitalization of $1,094 trillion.
• Bitcoin has dropped by nearly 3% this week.
• Ethereum lost almost 1% over the past seven days.
• XRP moved down by nearly 5% this past week.
• Almost all altcoins have been trading in the red, with very few exceptions.
• The DeFi sector maintains the total value protocols (TVL) at around $40 billion.

Cryptocurrency Trends for the Week of Aug. 1-7, 2022: Market Analysis and Performance

The cryptocurrency market showed slight signs of weakness in the first week of August. After an unexpected ascent throughout July, most assets have been seesawing between trading in the red and green. Fortunately, the losses and gains are tiny and rarely in two digits. Even the market capitalization lost only around $7 billion over the past seven days.

Bitcoin has recently been consolidating its position above $23,000. It has been a somewhat uneventful week for the king crypto, which tried hopelessly to surge to $25 thousand. However, it is still early for the cryptocurrency that was struggling to remain above $20,000 only a month ago.

Ethereum has also been maintaining its position, a little above $1,700. The second crypto in command had an excellent chance to reach $2 thousand, but it lacked market traction. Moreover, it seems that the bulls that pushed it for over five weeks straight have been steadily losing their power.

Elsewhere, this week’s biggest news came from Solana, which saw an attack on over 8,000 Slope user accounts. Slope is a web-based, non-custodial crypto wallet running on the Solana network. The hack drained the wallets of over $8 million worth of crypto assets, and the culprit is still at large.

Altcoins & DeFi

The altcoin sector showed signs of retreat after a lucrative month of important gains. For example, Solana moved down by nearly 9% and XRP by 5%. Meanwhile, Polygon has dropped by 4% and Cardano by 2%. The few climbers of the week include Avalanche, which moved up by 13%, BNB, up by 10%, and Polkadot, up by 2%.

The Metaverse sector has maintained a somewhat different course than the rest of the crypto market. Most of its assets have been trading in the green, with very few exceptions. For instance, ApeCoin was up by 7% this week. Meanwhile, Decentraland increased by 3% and the Theta Network by a whopping 17%. On the other hand, The Sandbox moved down by 2%.

The DeFi sector lost over $0.5 billion from the total value of protocols (TVL), standing at nearly $40.22 billion.

What’s in the News?

• Vitalik Buterin says centralized stablecoins could impact the future of Ethereum hard forks.
• Rock band Muse announced it will release its next album as an NFT on Polygon-based platform Serenade.
• Chiliz bought a $100 million stake in FC Barcelona’s digital studio.
• Binance and MasterCard are collaborating on a card rollout in Argentina.

Next Week’s Crypto Market Forecast

The crypto market has been slowing down after an exciting July, and it’s not surprising. After all, the economic crisis continues worldwide, and it’s normal for most sectors to shrink slightly following bull runs. Hopefully, this period of decline will not last for too long, and the assets will consolidate their recently-gained positions.

About the Author

Born and raised in Romania, and currently living in Spain, Iulian discovered a knack for writing from a tender age, and won some minor awards for fiction that didn't pay much.

Iulian became a content writer in 2011, and he is still doing it to some degree of success today. He is currently specialized in cryptocurrencies, technology, online marketing, and social media. In his free time, Iulian likes reading, traveling, and watching sports. His dream is to see Bitcoin reach $100,000 just so he can tell his friends “I told you so!”

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